Ulster County Executive Presses State to Act on Boiceville Water Crisis

Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger is calling on New York State regulators to intervene immediately as a water outage in Boiceville stretches into its fourth week and longstanding concerns persist over the Hudson Valley Water Company’s operations.

In a letter sent to New York State Department of Public Service CEO Rory Christian, Metzger said Boiceville residents have been left without potable water for 22 days due to another failure in the system’s arsenic removal technology — the same breakdown reported in December 2023.

“This is not a one-time occurrence,” Metzger wrote. “Our residents are rightly exasperated, as they were in precisely this same situation two years ago — the same system failure and the same pattern of poor communication with customers.”

Metzger urged the DPS and the Public Service Commission to expedite replacement of the filtration media and require installation of a backup filter system to prevent prolonged outages in the future. She also requested stricter enforcement of customer communication rules, a public update on an ongoing regulatory case, and action to transfer Hudson Valley Water Company’s five Ulster County systems to a more reliable operator.

Hudson Valley Water Company has been the subject of mounting complaints since at least 2019, including reports of service disruptions, billing errors and water quality issues. A DPS report in 2020 issued 49 corrective recommendations, many of which Metzger said remain unfulfilled.

In December 2023, the Boiceville system experienced a failure that led to a “Do Not Drink” order. The PSC launched a formal investigation earlier this year and ordered the company to show why it should not be replaced by a temporary operator.

Public hearings held throughout 2024 revealed concerns across all of the company’s local service areas — Boiceville, Mount Marion, High Falls Park, Pine Street-Hurley and West Hurley — where residents reported recurring outages and fears about water safety.

Metzger said the current outage underscores the need for permanent solutions.

“Our community should not have to endure another crisis to get the safe, reliable service they pay for and deserve,” she wrote.

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